


They Shouldn't Work

by Maab_Connor



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: comment_fic, First Time, M/M, Opposites Attract
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maab_Connor/pseuds/Maab_Connor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>comment fic prompt was:  Firefly, Mal/Simon, They should be incompatible</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Shouldn't Work

Even out in the black, Simon takes the time, every morning and every evening. He makes sure that his clothes are clean and pressed. He makes sure that his fingernails are immaculate and trimmed and buffed – his hands are very important, he can spend an hour a day on them. He makes sure that his hair is just right, so that he won’t leave any strays on a patient. He cleans himself and his quarters and his med bay. Half the time he cleans River’s quarters too, but that’s just because he knows that she doesn’t think of it, she never has; he doesn’t mind the extra work, and she trusts him to touch her stuff. Simon is careful and precise and exacting.

He still remembers the first time he saw the captain’s quarters. There was laundry everywhere and there was beard stubble in the sink even though Simon knew that the stubble on Mal’s chin spoke of at least three days not shaving. The bed wasn’t made and the air was stale. Simon started cleaning it before he registered the thought to do so.

Mal yelled at him for half an hour. Acutally, Mal yelled at him for about three words and then they’d yelled at each other for the rest of the time. Then Mal had cracked a joke about getting Simon a maid’s uniform and the source of the tension in the room shifted.

Suddenly Simon didn’t know if he should be retreating or advancing. He felt himself getting hard when Mal stepped into his personal space. And then they were kissing and falling onto newly-laundered sheets and their clothes were strewn across the floor. They were rough and claiming and when he pushed into the tight heat of Mal’s body, Simon finally realized that from that first punch, Mal had been flirting. Badly, but flirting nonetheless. It’s hard and fast and over way too soon. The doctor in Simon wants to tend to the bruises rising to the surface of Mal’s skin, but the lover in him wants to admire these marks he’s left and wants the rest of the verse to see them too.

In the following weeks they’re short with each other and uncomfortable in the same room. They’re two very different people and neither of them wants to walk into the kind of trouble they would be together. They don’t want the rest of the crew to know; they think that they accomplish that: and they do, for all of a day and a half. Mostly because they keep falling into bed together… or dimly-lit corners of the ship… or that one time when Simon went down on Mal in the med bay and Zoe wanted to gouge her eyes out and couldn’t look at either of them for two days.

Everything about them should be incompatible, they’re too different, it’s too hard. But they’re two sides of the same coin. Simon makes Mal stop and think and clear his head, he’s also the only one who will call Mal on his bullshit right off the bat; Simon is good at taking care of people, and Mal needs a keeper. Simon isn’t good with violence, he isn’t comfortable with it, but out here in the black, that’s not an option, and so Mal takes care of him too, by being a fast draw and having something to back up all the shit he can talk. They bicker together for fun and they fill in the gaps of life experience. And even when they’ve pissed each other off and they need their space, neither of them walks. Neither of them wants to.

Because even though they _shouldn’t_ work, they do. They fit.


End file.
